Musings at Altitude

I’ve been pondering lately the affects of “reaction” in business, and I’ve been watching how very smart business people react to varying challenges to business direction.  In that watching, I’ve come to several conclusions:

(1) You can never really under-react; under-reaction is in itself a reaction, just a reaction of no or improperly inappropiate action; under-reaction in a sense is the worst possible scenario, because it means that something of some level could have been, should have been and probably would have been done in reaction to whatever the stimulus was, but instead, no meaningful action was taken; it becomes very obvious very fast when under-reaction occurs, and when I under-react, the pain of knowing I could have done more and didn’t is overwhelming

(2) Most all of us react at what we think is an appropriate level of response, and then later we find out we may have under-reacted…every now and then we’ll figure out we over-reacted; but I’ve found that rarely if ever do I ever feel like I reacted appropriately; it seems like the scale tips one way or the other in every situation that warrants an action; I’ve read some interesting business reviews of those that took “appropriate action” during some specific crisis, but in almost every case, there was an under-reaction first, an assessment of the issue being faced, and then new actions that were then deemed appropriate later; this leaves me to wonder in business if the result of great planning and strategy is a proper reaction in any crisis?

(3) I’ve jumped on people in the past for over-reacting, but to be honest with you, I appreciate those that over-react; since I’m awkwardly slow at responding to any stimulus, having others around me that will react or over-react quickly is critical to success of any mission that I would be involved in; there is a point of insanity though where the over-reaction could be so extreme that unneeded resources are tied up in highly unnecessary responses…in those cases, we all have an obligation to shut things down; but if the over-reaction makes us sharper, or makes us more responsive, or makes us more credible in the eyes of those watching closely our reaction to any issue, then it’s hard to fault anyone whose standard response is an over-reaction

I’ve come to the conclusion that if you under-react, you always seem to fail at some point in some way.  If you over-react, you tend to consume resources that may or may not be available for consumption, but the mission will succeed and the problem or issue will be resolved.  If you react properly, you probably over-reacted at some point but no one really cares about the consumption of additional resources because it was budgeted in a slush fund environment and did not cause any significantly noticeable overrun, or, you under-reacted at some point and then over-reacted to correct and thus stayed on budget and potentially on schedule.

Assuming I react thousands of times a day to any stimulus received (maybe millions if we look at all senses), I bet I personally under-react much more than over-react.  If you buy into the facts that we don’t lead alone and we should judge a leadership team rather than individual leaders, I should always be partnered with an over-reactor.  Two under-reactors partnered together are a catastrophe waiting to happen!